New Coincident and Leading Indexes for the Lebanese Economy

Matta Samer ()
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Matta Samer: World Bank – Macroeconomics & Fiscal Management Global Practice, Bourrie House, Allenby Street Down Town, Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, 2015, vol. 11, issue 3, 277-303

Abstract: Weak economic statistics in Lebanon impede economic analysis and decision making. This paper presents a new coincident index and a leading index for the Lebanese economy. A new methodology, based on the National Bureau of Economic Research–Conference Board approach, was used to construct these indexes. The indexes can be used as monthly proxies for the evolution of real gross domestic product with a relatively small time lag (four to five months). Notwithstanding the relatively small sample period, the results reveal promising statistical properties that should make these new indexes valuable coincident and leading (one-year ahead) indexes for analyzing the dynamics of the Lebanese economy. However, given limitations on the length of the gross domestic product time series in Lebanon, the accuracy of these indexes in tracking the business cycle of the Lebanese economy is expected to improve over time as more data points become available.

Keywords: Lebanon; real economy; coincident index; leading index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1515/rmeef-2014-0039

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